Telephone / Internet

Telephone, Postal Services and Internet

Making phone calls from Cape Verde is not cheap. The monopoly of the state-owned telephone company was ended in early 2007, so a liberalisation of the telephone market is actually expected. Since 2008, the former monopolist company CVTelecom has a competitor in the mobile communication sector called Tmais.

There are now public card payphones in every town. Telephone cards can be purchased at post offices, larger hotels, some restaurants and little stores for 275 or 750 escudos. The latter is recommended because a phone call to Europe costs about 300 escudos per minute. Calls on mobile phones should be avoided, if possible. Although there is a network for E-plus, D1, O2 and Vodafone, the roaming costs are very high -- even for just answering calls.

Post offices can be found in the larger towns on all islands. You can also make phone calls here, but the minimum price for 3 minutes that comes at a hefty rate of around 2 euros per minute. The business hours are similar to those in Europe: on workdays from 8 a.m.–12 p.m. and from 2:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. The delivery time for postcards to Europe is about 14 days.

Cape Verdeans also embraced the Internet a long time ago. As a result, there are Internet or cyber cafés that can be used at reasonable rates in all of the larger towns: On Sal (Santa Maria, Esparagos), Boa Vista (Sal Rei), Santiago (Praia), Fogo (São Felipe), São Vicente (Mindelo) and Santo Antão (Ribeira Grande, Paúl and Ponta do Sol). We recommend using the Internet programme Skype, especially for international calls, due to the high telephone costs.